creepingnet's Music Gear Setup

It was 2009, Hipster-dom was riding high, and Jazzmasters were starting to go for a premium. and I wanted one because I always loved the Jazzmaster since playing a Foto Flame 1994 MIJ model with Seymour Duncan pickups. When the only Jazzmaster you can find costs at least $800 - why spend it all at once when you can spend it gradually over time.

But Jazzmasters had some things with them that I did not like, in particular, only 21 frets, out of the box the bridge usually needs some work, the fretboard radius is a bit too round for the scale length, the tuners are flimsy on some of hte reissues, and the bridge pickups on every Jazzmaster I ever played were anemic and/or imbalanced to the neck (ie, the hotter pickup always was in the neck for some reason).

So this was my attempt to tweak the Jazzmaster into what I think a modern Jazzmaster should be. A Jazzmaster that can rock out with the best of them but not lose any of the unique traits that made the Jazzmaster such a special sounding, playing, and feeling guitar.

I started off with a Swamp Ash body, so as to have a pretty finish, light weight, and some dampening for the high frequencies - basically to absorb some of the "Ice Picky-ness" of the Jazzmaster but not lose the highs so much it sounds less like a Jazzmaster and more generic.

The next thing addressed were the electronics, in particular, the pickups. In the bridge is a Alnico 2 10% overwound Pickup Wizards Jazzmaster pickup, measuring in at 8.8K Ohms resistance, with a Alnico V AVRI 62' Jazzmaster pickup in the neck to add a little more spank and sparkle to the neck position whilst keeping that signature Jazzmaster sound to it. The pickups are NOT RWRP as Fender and Pickup Wizards seemed to have done it differently.

These two are wired into a standard Jazzmaster wiring harness wired with cloth wire - 50's style - with no alteration from the standard Jazzmaster schematic at all. The Jazzmaster is rather versitile to begin with so no need to fix what's not broken to begin with. When you play one, you have to think with a bit of inverse logic of other guitars though - on the lead circuit, you want to turn the volume DOWN to warm things up and increase the gain, not the tone, and turn it up if you want to clean things up and gain more twang. The sweet spot is around 7 - gives it a very P-90-like output, flat out sounds like a Pissed off Telecaster on steroids with more bass and naturally scooped mids.

I forewent a vibrato unit with the Trem Lock both for budget reasons and that I've never had to use that feature on any offset I've ever used with this vibrato, and I use my own special setup that increases the vibrato range, bringing it into first album Van-Halen territory - that's right, I use this guitar to dive bomb - people said it could not be done, so I looked at the mechanics, figured it out, and did it!

I used the much maligned stock bridge, one of the import variants. I did the same mod to it I did to my Jaguar, 2 thicker springs on the outer E saddles to box the middle ones in, and angled the Low E saddle upward to lock the low E string in place and prevent it from jumping. Works just as great, and it increases sustain from both the scale length and the "3rd bridge" behind the bridge - which is like having a whole second instrument there - either that or a built in reverb tank made of sympathetic vibrations - one of my favorite features of the Jaguar/Jazzmaster vibrato setup. The main problem with these bridges has almost always been part tolerances rather than breakover angle.

The Neck was the other major upgrade to the design - I wanted something skinny, with a flat radius, 22 frets, and something that looked late 70's/early 80's - so what I wound up with is a Tommy's Custom Bodies and Necks 22 Fret Maple neck with maple fretboard and a CBS Fender headstock. I put a CBS Fender Decal on it just to see how many people would think this was a custom shop build, LOL. I'm planning to remove it in the future and put my own waterslide on there (just a sponge away from that). The flat 12" Radius and bi-directional truss rod has allowed this guitar to be probably one of the fastest playing Jazzmasters ever made - J.Mascius would HATE this thing I'm sure, strung up with .009's and only something like a 10th of an inch between the 22nd fret and the strings with little to no buzzing if you play light and fast like a metal player. The added 22nd Fret means I can do some mondo bends up to F#-A on the high E at the 22nd fret, effectively pushing the guitar's overall pitch range up a little bit too.

That said I have had some improvements to make to it. The original selector switch I used was a tad junky, had to re-bend the leafs inside the switch to keep contact. Switched to a Gibson switch and the problem went away. Have been toying with installing a "Super Switch" on it at some point to add even more tonal options like series/parallel/phase reversal. Another change soon coming is Kluson Revolution tuners because I found the Kluson Tone Pros I originally used are a bit too flimsy for frequent gigging as I played this guitar out a lot and found those tuners made the tuning stability a bit of a crap shoot - but I've been testing the Revolutions and they sound better as they add a little more mass to the headstock, and also are a LOT more stable, less drifting, and no play in the keys.

Either way, I've toyed with building small batches of hand-built guitars and I consider this a prototype to my own tribute to the original Jazzmaster. Sort of the Caroll Shelby Jazzmaster if you will - looks like a production guitar because at it's core, it is, but has all the right tweaks in the right places to make it play fast, stay in tune, and be versitile enough to not be limited to just being a Grungy Fuzzer and a Surfy Plinker. It's just as at home growling out UFO and Scorpions songs as it is getting fuzzed up for some Bush, Sonic Youth, and Dinosaur Jr, or dripping in reverb and taking the classic Ventures route, or the wacky B-52's route.